Computer Age: Past, Present, and Future

Generations of ComputerThe First generation The Second Generation The Third Generation The Fourth Generation The Fifth Generation

The Computer Age Rapid

changes Four generations over 50 years Trends

across generations Decrease size Increase speed

The First Generation

1951-1958 Vacuum Tube

Magnetic core memory Storage

Heat Burnout

Machine language

Punched cards Tape (1957)

Characteristics of 1st Generation Computers Computers big and clumsy Electricity consumption is high Electric failure occurred regularly - computers not very reliable Large air conditioners was necessary because the computers generated heat Batch processing

The First Generation 1951,

UNIVAC

Eckert and Mauchly completed the first commercial computer in the USA the UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) First computer built for business Short Code - A set of instructions called Short Code is developed for the UNIVAC. Programmers

The First Generation

1951, SAGE - Semi Automatic Ground Environment was developed. IBM built the SAGE computers and became leaders in real-time applications and used the technology of Whirlwind. SAGE computers were used in an early U.S. air defense system. They were fully deployed in 1963, that consisted of 27 centers throughout North America, each with a duplexed AN/FSQ-7 computer system containing over 50,000 vacuum tubes, weighing 250 tons and occupying an acre of floor space. SAGE was the first large computer network to provide man-machine interaction in real time.

The First Generation

1952, EDVACElectronic Discreet Variable Computer

John Von Neumann, designed with a central control unit which would calculate and output all mathematical and logical problems and a memory which could be written to and read. (RAM in modern terms) which would store programs and data.

The First Generation

1953, IBM 701

The 701 was formally announced on May 21, 1952. It was the unit of the overall 701 Data Processing System in which actual calculations were performed. That activity involved 274 assemblies executing all the system's computing and control functions by means of electronic pulses emitted at speeds ranging up to one million a second. Whirlwind was a large scale, general purpose digital computer begun at the Servomechanisms Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1946.

1953, The Whirlwind

The Second Generation 1959-1964 Transistor

Storage

Smaller No warm-up time Less energy Less heat Faster More reliable

Removable disk pack (1954) Magnetic tape Assembly language FORTRAN (1954) COBOL(1959)

Programming

languages

Used primarily by business, university, government

The Second Generation Computers

became smaller Generate less heat Electricity consumption lower More reliable and faster Core memory developed Magnetic tapes and disks used First operating systems developed A new processing method was needed. Time-sharing (processing technique)

The Second Generation 1963, Mini-computer: PDP-8 Digital introduces the first successful minicomputer the PDP8. It was about as large as a fridge and used transistors and magnetic core memory.

1964 Real-time reservation system IBM developed a realtime computerised ticket reservation system for American Airways. It was smaller than SAGE and was called SABRE (Semi-Automatic Business-Related Environment).

The Second Generation

1964, IBMs System 360 It consisted of 6 processors and 40 peripheral units. More than 100 computers per month were ordered. 1964, BASIC (programming language)

A programming language was necessary that could be used in a time-sharing environment and that could serve as a training language.

The Third Generation

1965-1970 Integrated Circuit Electronic circuit on small silicon chip Reliability Compactness Low cost Inexpensive massproduced

1. Computers smaller, faster and more reliable 2. Power consumption lower 3. High-level languages appeared

The Third Generation 1965,

Gordon Moore

The semi-conductor pioneer, Gordon Moore (founder of Intel), predicted that the number of transistors that occurred on a microchip would double every year. It became known as Moores Law and is still valid today.

Burroughs

used integrated circuits in parts of two computers - the B2500 and the B3500. Control Data and NCR made two computers using only integrated circuits - the CDC 7600 and the Century series respectively.

The Third Generation

1968, Intel was founded (INTegrated Electronics).

They developed more sophisticated memory chips.

1968, Magnetic core memory was replaced by a microchip.

The first 256 bit RAM microchips, and later the first 1Kb RAM (1024 byte) chips, caused the disappearance of Magnetic Core Memory that was used since the mid 1950's.

1969, IBM System/370 replaced their System/360 with the System/370 that only used integrated circuits.

The Fourth Generation

1971-Present Microprocessor General-purpose processor on a chip Explosive growth Digital watches Pocket calculators Personal computers Cars Copy machines Television sets

Integrated circuits, smaller and faster Micro computer series such as IBM and APPLE developed Portable computers developed Great development in data communication Different types of secondary memory with high storage capacity and fast access developed

The Fourth Generation

1971, Microprocessor Intel developed the first microprocessor - a CPU on a microchip.

1971, Pascal (programming language) Early programming languages

It was called the 4004 and consisted of 2-250 transistors capable of processing 4 bits at a rate of 60,000 transactions/second.

Niklaus Wirth - a Swedish computer scientist - developed the Pascal language in 1971. This language was specifically designed to teach the concepts of structured programming. Pascal remains the most popular language for learning the basic principles of good programming. Intel released the 8008 - an 8 bit processor powerful enough to be used as the CPU of a minicomputer

1972, 8008

The Fourth Generation

1972, CP/M (Operating system)

The first operating system for microcomputers was developed by Gary Kildall and John Torode. Torode developed hardware to connect a diskette (floppy disk) to the CPU. 8080 Microprocessor, was released - it made the development of the microcomputer possible.

MARK-8 Johnathan Titus (a chemist with an interest in electronics) ordered an 8008 processor from Intel.

He built a computer with six(6) circuit boards which had 256 bytes RAM.

1974

Motorolas 6800 processor developed a processor

the 6800. which could perform all the functions of the 8080.

The Fourth Generation

1975 - January

Altair 8800- Popular Mechanics published an article which announced the development of a true personal computer Developed by MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems). It used the 8-bit Intel 8080 microprocessor and was made available in a complete kit, including all components and assembly instructions. 256 bytes of RAM was available. 16 slots were left open to include more RAM when necessary.

Apple- Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded the Apple Company . They built a microcomputer motherboard that used a 8-bit processor. The motherboard was a single circuit board and held 4 Kb RAM. 1976, MOS 6502 processor MOS technologies announced the development of the 6502 processor, an 8-bit processor with very few registers and 16-bit address bus. It was used in the design of the Apple II

The Fourth Generation

1977. Apple II Wozniak and Jobs released the Apple II. It was cheap, had 16 Kb RAM and was ideal for playing video games.

1978 Intels 8086 processor that contained 16-bit registers and used segmented memory addressing.All x86 processors had to be compatible with the set of instructions, first used in this processor. 1979, Motorolas 68000 processor which was used in the Apple Lisa and Macintosh computers.

It was sold with a keyboard, a power supply and included 8 slots for peripherals. It could therefore be used with a wider variety of peripherals and programs.

The Fourth Generation

First spreadsheet :

VisiCalcDan Bricklin and Bob Frankston of the Software Arts Company developed the first spreadsheet program for use on microcomputers, namely VisiCalc. It was distributed by Personal Software for use on all Apple computers.Word processor The word processing program WordStar was developed by Seymour Rubenstein's firm MicroPro and became the best seller in the CP/M operating environment.

WordStar

1981, IBM PCIBM announced it's first Personal Computer the IBM PC - an Intel 8088 processor 1982, Intels 286 processor. Intel announced the 80286 microprocessor.

This was used in the IBM PC AT (Advanced Technology).

4th Generation 1983, Apples Lisa Apple announced the Lisa, a computer that used a mouse to move a cursor on the screen in order to select commands. The Lisa was the first commercial computer to use a Graphical User Interface (GUI) 1983, IBM announced the PC XT (eXtended Technology). Memory was expanded to 640 Kb and it featured: 4,77 MHz processor speed Double floppy disks MS DOS version 3.3 Later versions also had 10 or 20 Mb hard disk drives available. 1990, Windows 3.0 (operating system) Microsoft released Windows 3.0.

The Fifth Generation

Mid 1990s Intelligent computers Artificial intelligence Expert systems Natural language

Applications for 5th Gen computers

Intelligent robots that could see their environment (visual input - e.g. a video camera) and could be programmed to carry out certain tasks and should be able to decide for itself how the task should be accomplished, based on the observations it made of its environment. Intelligent systems that could control the route of a missile and defence-systems that could fend off attacks. Word processors that could be controlled by means of speech recognition. Programs that could translate documents from one language to another.

5th Generation

Some technological developments that could make the development of fifth-generation computers possible, include:

Parallel-processing - many processors are grouped to function as one large group processor. Superconductors - a superconductor is a conductor through which electricity can travel without any resistance resulting in faster transfer of information between the components of a computer. Expert Systems helps doctors to reach a diagnosis by following the logical steps of problem solving just as if the doctor would have done it himself. Speech recognition systems, capable of recognising dictation and entering the text into a word processor, are already available.

The Fifth Generation AI Artificial Intelligence How

computers can be used for tasks that required human characteristics

Problem Solving by Search

An important aspect of intelligence is goal-based problem solving. The solution of many problems (e.g. noughts and crosses, timetabling, chess) can be described by finding a sequence of actions that lead to a desirable goal. Each action changes the state and the aim is to find the sequence of actions and states that lead from the initial (start) state to a final (goal) state.

A well-defined problem can be described by: 1. Initial state 2. Operator or successor function - for any state x returns s(x), the set of states reachable from x with one action 3. State space - all states reachable from initial by any sequence of actions 4. Path - sequence through state space 5. Path cost - function that assigns a cost to a path. Cost of a path is the sum of costs of individual actions along the path 6. Goal test - test to determine if at goal state

The Fifth Generation Expert Systems Software

used with an extensive set of organized data that presents the computer as an expert on a particular topic

The Fifth Generation Natural Language Humans

communicate with computers in the language they use on a daily basis

The Fifth Generation Robotics

Computer-controlled device that can physically manipulate its surroundingsRobot development firm Speecys Corp. of Tokyo developed a small humanoid robot, powered entirely by easy-to-replace, environmentally friendly fuel-cell batteries.

THOR on display and demonstration circa 1981

The Fifth Generation VR Virtual Reality

Engage a user in a computer-created environment

User physically interacts with computer-created environment

The END